SteveWh - 4:40 am on Apr 16, 2009 (gmt 0)

How big is the site in MB?

Do you have a forum or shopping cart or anything else that uses a MySQL database?

Do you have a large number of email addresses, forwarders, filters, etc?

I have already backed up a remote to local copy of the site to my computer

Was it...

1) an "official" backup in .tar.gz format generated from cPanel > Backups > "Download or Generate a Full Web Site Backup"

or

2) a backup you made by either
a) "Reverse publishing" from inside FrontPage or
b) copying all the website files manually by FTP or
c) some other similar method?

#1) will contain everything you need to recreate the website.
#2) will contain only the website document files, and you'll have to manually create all your email accounts, databases, etc. from scratch.

Obviously #1 is preferable. If you used that, you should be able to turn off the FP Extensions, upload the .tar.gz file to public_html, and your new host can unzip it and do whatever other actions are required to recreate the site as it was, in its entirety, IF they're willing to do even that much.

If they are not willing to do it, I can't offer any assistance because I don't know the methods involved. It could simply involve unzipping the file, but I suspect there is more to it. Hopefully someone else can help on that.

Continuing on... if the host won't unzip the .gz, and if you can't find out how to do it yourself, the last resort is to...

Turn off the FPE. Publish the entire site from within FrontPage, using FTP publishing. That will at least put the files in their places.
Manually set up all your email accounts, databases (if necessary), and any other parts of the site that weren't transferred by the FTP publish.
Now try going to your site by typing into your address bar the temporary URL your new host provided. Browse around. If your themes, navigation link bars, forms, and other features are, or look, broken, it's a sign you probably need the FrontPage Extensions.
So try turning them on, and browse through the site again.
Everything working?
After you turn on the FPE, never use FTP publishing again.

I have found 3 sources saying that you cannot use FrontPage HTTP publishing until your domain has propagated, so at this point you must change the nameservers. Don't try to publish with HTTP until that is done. If you do and it fails, you'll need to reinstall the FPE, and every time you do that, there are parts of your site that get deleted on the server, and you must republish them.

After propagation is complete, browse your site again to ensure it's working.
Try HTTP publishing to publish a single page.
If it doesn't work, post in your new host's forum or file a support ticket.

[edited by: SteveWh at 4:57 am (utc) on April 16, 2009]